I'm of to meet my parents for some tourist activities but a short recap...

I didn't get a chance to ski the course before the sprint relay because we were in the second heat of the women's semi final and the men went first so the course was closed before I wanted to ski. Randy did wax and choose an awesome pair of skate skis for me though, a new pair from Salomon because none of mine were soft enough for the conditions (thanks Salomon!).

On the first lap I was greeted with piles of slush to ski through and mentally sighed because soft, slushy snow is NOT my favorite thing to ski through. Oh well, keep the steps light and don't get bogged down. I was starting for us and got off to a poor start and then I picked the wrong girl to ski behind and everyone passed us on the first uphill. So I was in last place (sorry Kikkan). The second hill was a little firmer and I liked that better, but then on the downhill one of the girls crashed in front of me and I had to do some manuevering but made it around. Came in to hand off to Kikkan off the back of the pack though.

Kikkan caught us back up to the group on her first lap and I managed to hang with them on my second lap, barely holding onto sixth place. Kikkan's second lap kept us in sixth place. Then my third lap I tried to catch the fifth place girl because top five teams go on to the final. I closed on her (Italy) but couldn't quite make contact. So we ended up in sixth, about three seconds out of qualifying. Sad. It was tough to race in the deep snow, but good experience. And we need to work on our hand-offs before we have another team sprint.